By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
A climate group is preparing legal action against the board of directors at Shell (LON: SHEL) for not preparing the oil giant to cut emissions fast enough.
Environmental shareholder group ClientEarth claims the suit will be the first attempt of its kind to hold executives responsible for failing to devise a plan in line with the Paris Agreement.
ClientEarth argues that the 13 Shell directors are in breach of their obligations under the UK Companies Act and is petitioning the High Court of England and Wales to bring the claim forward.
The group’s lawyer Paul Benson said the action is “highly novel” and “uncharted territory,” but “the longer the board delays with this the more likely it is that the company is going to have to execute this sort of handbrake turn to retain commercial competitiveness, to meet the challenges of inevitable regulatory developments”.
Mr Benson said Shell is exposed to “massive write-downs” on its facilities and infrastructure as the net zero transition progresses.
If Shell loses then it may be forced to change its emissions strategy.
It comes less than a year after Shell was ordered by a Dutch court to reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. Shell has appealed, saying a judgement against a single company is “not effective” for the scale of the climate challenge.
The firm has committed to halving absolute emissions from its own operations by 2030 following a landmark Dutch court ruling in May, but not scope 3 which covers the emissions of customers.
ClientEarth argued this is not consistent with the Paris Agreement’s aim to limit any global temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Leaving aside the actual legal arguments, who is funding the ClientEarth group who are bringing this action, which certainly won’t be cheap.
They have total annual income of £29 million, but the top ten donors make up two thirds of this:
Yet again we see the usual Green Blob funders, such as CIFF, Grantham, ECF, Wellspring, and Tilia.
But why on earth is the DFID funding legal action intended to wreck not only Shell, but also our energy security in years to come?
One might also ask the same question about the EU
At a time when both the UK and EU are being forced by the Ukraine crisis to re-evaluate their energy policy and the use of fossil fuels, it simply is not acceptable that green activists within the government machine are using taxpayer money to subvert it.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
March 17, 2022 at 05:06AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 